This Jane Austen blog brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive through food, dress, social customs, and other 19th C. historical details related to this topic.

I’m sure most of Jane Austen’s fans have already heard of a remarkable purchase from eBay – a treasure trove of photographs of Jane Austen’s nieces and nephews. The album was assembled by Lord George Augusta Hill who “married two of Austen’s nieces, both daughters of her older brother Edward.” – The Telegraph.

I have previously viewed photographs of Austen’s brothers and her friend, Martha Lloyd in their advanced age and often wondered what Jane Austen truly looked like. She died a decade before the first photograph was ever taken.

Jane Austen portrait by Cassandra Austen, National Portrait Gallery

The reason for my curiosity is that only one authenticated watercolor portrait of her (painted from life by her sister Cassandra) exists. There are other portraits purported to be of Jane, but their provenance is not 100% certain. Even Austen’s famous silhouette, used on many websites and in publications, might or might not be of her. The original was tucked in the back of an 1814 edition of Mansfield Park, Volume 2, and inscribed with “L’aimable Jane.”

“As her biographer, R.W. Chapman, said ‘Who would insert, in a copy of Mansfield Park, a portrait of any other Jane than its author?’” – National Portrait Gallery

At best, this statement and the placement of the silhouette is circumstantial proof of the image’s authenticity.

Sadly, modern readers can never view a photographic image of Jane Austen, but we can, due to this photographic find, see one of her favorite niece. Fanny Austen Knight. Fanny was born in 1793, when Jane was 17. Cassandra Austen painted a watercolor of a lovely Fanny when she must have been in her teens.

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The photo is of a mature Fanny, now Lady Knatchbull, wearing stodgy Victorian garb. Fanny lived a long and privileged life, having married a wealthy baronet. She bore him nine children and lived until the age of 88.

Jane was, by all accounts, a pretty and vivacious girl when she was on the “marriage mart.” We think of her as a country spinster wearing a variety of hand-sewn caps, but her lively intelligence shone through her sparking eyes and bright complexion.

For years I’ve been struck by how closely many people resemble their ancestors, even generations down the line. Anna Chancellor, who played Caroline Bingley in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice, is an Austen descendant who can trace her lineage maternally to Edward Austen Knight of Chawton, the very same Edward who offered Chawton Cottage rent free to his mother and two sisters. Jane is Anna’s eight-times great aunt.

Francis Austen, brother

Jane Austen

Anna Chancellor, descendant

These images of Jane, Francis, and Anna show a marked familial similarity in dark, piercing eyes, set of mouth and jaw, and hair color. I often look at Anna’s photos and imagine how Jane would have aged. (Nicely.)

I can’t wait until this album is examined by experts and curated for a future exhibition. Let’s hope this will be sooner rather than later.

Sources:

Lost photographs of Jane Austen’s nieces discovered on eBay reveal how author foretold their lives in plots of her novels, Helena Horton, 11 January 2019 News, The Telegraph. Click on this link.

Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was as fabulous and unforgettable as mine. One of my favorite holiday gifts was a gift certificate from Barnes & Noble, which helped me to complete all six annotations by Harvard University Press of Jane Austen’s best known novels. I quickly purchased Northanger Abbey, which I’ve been perusing since receiving it a few days ago.

Susan J. Wolfson, professor in the Department of English at Princeton University, edited this edition, which has an extensive 60-page introduction. The book’s format follows the five other annotations – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion – with Jane Austen’s text in the center and the annotated commentary placed on the far right on uneven pages or far left on even pages. Descriptive images of Bath, a poste chaise, or fashions of the day provide a visual punch to this annotation, as do the well-chosen images in the other books.

Jane Austen’s Christmas Day at Godmersham Park, her brother’s estate in the English countryside of Kent, was a merry one. As described by Claire Tomalin in Jane Austen: A Life , “Christmas was celebrated with carols, card games, blindman’s bluff, battledore, bullet pudding and dancing.”

Austen herself described the gaiety and revelry of Christmas in Persuasion, Chapter 14:

On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and on the other were trestles and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard in spite of the noise of the others.”

The games mentioned by Tomalin in her excellent biography of Austen included Hunt the Slipper, which, when played by children, would be fun and boisterous, and when played by adults at a country house gathering could have a naughty connotation, as in the 1802 image in the Hunt the Slipper: A Story, (Peabody Essex Museum).

Hunt the Slipper game directions. (Hunt the Slipper, The American Folk Song Collection, Kodaly Center, Holy Names University.

Hunt the Slipper reminds me of musical chairs, only the slipper is passed secretly to the players until the song ends. This simple but fun song/game is still played today. You can view the “Hunt the Slipper” image by Kate Greenaway, who lived in the last half of the 19th century, then read the 2008 description of the game in The Guardian at this link: click here. The rules over the centuries are remarkably similar.

In her book, Claire Tomalin mentioned a second song and game that the Austen family (and other families of the era) played called “Oranges and Lemons.” References to this traditional song and nursery rhyme appeared as early as the 17th century.

The first published record of Oranges and Lemons dates back to 1744 in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, although it’s fair to assume it had been in circulation for some time before then. There is a reference to a square dance with the same name in a 1665 publication…– What is London’s Oranges and Lemons rhyme all about? by Benjamin Till, People Features, London, BBC Home, 13 November, 2014

Till discusses the many meanings of this song. In short, London’s churches, which are located in distinct districts within the city, are identified with certain trades.

References to “pancakes and fritters”, “kettles and pans” and “brick bats and tiles” tell us of bakers, coppersmiths and builders in areas around St Peter Upon Cornhill, St Anne’s and St Giles, Cripplegate respectively.” — Till, BBC Home

A version of the song can be heard on YouTube.

Many versions of this song exist, which makes one wonder which lyrics Jane Austen and her family sang. This is one version:

“Oranges and Lemons”

Two Sticks and Apple,
Ring ye Bells at Whitechapple,
Old Father Bald Pate,
Ring ye Bells Aldgate,
Maids in White Aprons,
Ring ye Bells a St. Catherines,
Oranges and Lemmons,
Ring ye bells at St. Clemens,
When will you pay me,
Ring ye Bells at ye Old Bailey,
When I am Rich,
Ring ye Bells at Fleetditch,
When will that be,
Ring ye Bells at Stepney,
When I am Old,
Ring ye Bells at Pauls

Here is another version, date unknown by me:

Gay go up and gay go down,
To ring the bells of London town.

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clements.

Bull’s eyes and targets,
Say the bells of St. Margret’s.

Brickbats and tiles,
Say the bells of St. Giles’.

Halfpence and farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin’s.

Pancakes and fritters,
Say the bells of St. Peter’s.

Two sticks and an apple,
Say the bells of Whitechapel.

Pokers and tongs,
Say the bells of St. John’s.

Kettles and pans,
Say the bells of St. Ann’s.

Old Father Baldpate,
Say the slow bells of Aldgate.

You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helen’s.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

Pray when will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

Chop chop chop chop
The last man’s dead!

This YouTube video of Oranges and Lemons from Gresham College performs the earliest known version of the song by Catherine King. The illustration of the dance for “Oranges and Lemons,” which is copyright free, is by Agnes Rose Bouvier (1842 – 1892).

One can imagine how much fun Aunts Jane and Cassandra must have had singing these popular songs while dancing and playing the games during the Christmas season with their nieces and nephews and the family in general.

As I end this post, Christmas day has nearly come to an end. I wish you all a happy holiday season and New Year’s celebration. May you all find joy, dear readers, in the gifts and love of your family, faith, and friends.

Sprigs of ivy in window panes and a bough of mistletoe overhead. Detail of a Bowles and Carver print, London. Circa 1775

On Christmas Eve the children laid out the traditional holly branches on the window ledges…” Jane Austen: A Life, Claire Tomalin, p. 4.

Christmas decorations during the Regency era were relatively simple compared to today’s standards, or even Victorian standards, when Christmas trees and wrapped packages made major appearances in common households.

Evergreen plants that bore fruit in the winter season, such as holly, mistletoe, rosemary, bay, laurel, box, yew, and fir have been popular British holiday decorations for centuries. Their meaning as symbols of everlasting life is derived from pagan days (Sciencing). It is uncertain when these evergreens began to be used as Christmas decorations, but carols mentioning the holly and ivy appeared before the 15th century. In addition to the holly and ivy, this early 17th century carol describes Christmas customs that are still popular.

[A Christmas Carol, by George Wither. From his “Juvenilia,” ﬁrst printed in 1622.]

So, now is come our joyfulst feast;Let every man be jolly;Each room with ivy leaves is drest,And every post with holly.Though some churls at our mirth repine,Round your foreheads garlands twine;‘Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,And let us all be merry.Now, all our neighbours’ chimnies smoke,And Christmas blocks are burning;Their ovens they with bak’d meats choke,And all their spits are turning.Without the door let sorrow lye;And if for cold it hap to die,We’ll bury’t in a Christmas pie,And ever more be merry.

In Susan Drury’s 1985 study of “Customs and Beliefs Associated with Christmas Evergreens: A Preliminary Survey,” the tradition of putting up and taking down evergreen Christmas decorations varied across England. Observing the superstitions of a particular region (and the strict rules for their length of stay), decorations were put up on either Christmas Eve or on Christmas day. Some regions dictated that decorations be taken down on Twelfth Night, or the 12th day of Christmas, while others recorded that they should remain up until Candlemas Eve on February 2, or the 40th day of Christmas. To make matters more complicated, the manner of disposing the evergreens differed according to local superstitions. “In Cornwall, as probably in Devon, evergreens would appear to have been hung on Christmas Eve… On Twelfth Day every piece of evergreen had to be removed, because it was believed that for every leaf left a ghost would be seen in the house in the ensuing year.”

We all know of Jane Austen’s years in Bath, Somerset. Drury mentions that in this region no holly or mistletoe “was to be hung up before Christmas eve,” which gives us an idea of when the Austen’s purchased evergreens (for they were now city dwellers) to festoon their house. Drury’s passage for Somerset is somewhat confusing in the disposal of evergreens, for she jumps from Somerset to South Somerset to the customs of local churches, which all differ. She writes that “The importance of Christmas evergreen decorations in England is shown by the strict rules regarding their length of stay and the care taken in disposing of them when they were removed from the walls, a process which varies between and often within each county.”

In closing, Robert Herrick describes the best time of the year for the disposal of a variety evergreens throughout the calendar year in this poem…

CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE

Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.

The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter’s eve appear.

Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.

When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,
To honour Whitsuntide.

Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.

Specimens of Old Christmas Carols: Selected from Manuscripts and Printed Books, Volume 4, London: Printed for the Percy Society. By T. Richards, for the Executors of the late C. Richards, 100, St. Martin’s Lane. 1841.

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Once again December has caught me flat footed. It is almost 10 days into the month and I am still researching interesting historical information about Christmas holiday celebrations as Jane Austen would have known them. While many books, articles, bloggers and internet sites cover this topic in detail, I hope to add a few interesting items that might not be widely known. I urge you to read Austenonly’s excellent article, “But Surely Christmas in England Didn’t Exist Until Dickens Invented It? “, which explains how and why this season was suppressed for years by the Puritans in the mid-17th century, when Charles I had been deposed and beheaded, and how our customs managed to survive and flourish.

As many of you know, Christmas celebrations as we know it in modern times (the decorative tree, a German custom, the elaborately wrapped presents, and the many traditional carols we still sing today) are rooted in Victorian times. So how did Jane Austen and her contemporaries celebrate this important Christian holiday? I hope to link to many articles of interest and provide a few insights of my own.

I learned with shock that many of my favorite carols, such as Silent Night and The First Noel, were written after Jane Austen’s death. I chose the following two 17th century carols (which Jane Austen might not have known, but which had been retrieved from obscurity in 1841 by Thomas Wright in Specimens of Old Christmas Carols ) because of the Boar’s Head motif, which has endured to this day. I love the old English spelling in these songs and yet their content speaks to the celebrations we still hold today.

A Carol bringyng in the bores heed.

Caput apm’ dgfero, Reddens laudes Domino.

[From a Collection of Christmas Carols, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1521, from which book it is given by Hearne, in his notes to William of Newbery, iii. p. 17 5.]

The bores heed in hande bring I,

With garlands gay and rosemary;

I praye you all synge merely,

qui estis in convivio.

The bores heed, I understande,

Is the chefe servyce of this lande;

Loke where ever it be fande,

servite cum cantico.

Be gladde, lordes, bothe more and lasse,

For this hath ordeyned owr stewarde,

T o chere you all this Christmasse,

The bores heed with mustarde.

XIX. [The following modernised form of the foregoing carol, is given by Dr. Dibdin, as preserved and used up to a very recent period at Queen’s College, Oxford. Dibdin’s Ames, vol. ii. p. 252.]

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I am sharing this 18th century recipe just in time for the American Thanksgiving. In Georgian England and Colonial America, apples were picked in late fall in preparation for making cyder. The fermented concoction was then bottled in March. This recipe comes from The Compleat Houfewife: or, Accomplifs’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, written by Eliza Smith and first published in London in 1727. The book was widely disseminated over the next 50 years, including the American colonies.

For those who are curious about the cider recipe above, a hogshead equals 110 gallons. By the end of the 17th century, close to to 10,000 hogsheads were exported yearly from Worcestershire alone. (1)

From Ancient Cider Making at Smithsonian.com

Drinking cider has been around for thousands of years.

…cider spread throughout the Roman Empire and across Europe, becoming popular with people from the Germanic tribes to the Normans, whose conquest of England in the 9th century brought apple orchards and the very word “cider” into the English language.” Read more @ Smithsonian.com

While ale and beer were more popular drinks, cider held its own. One of the apples mentioned in Eliza Smith’s cyder recipe is a pippin. The word pippin denotes an apple tree grown from a seedling and that was not a grafted. Apples in the 17th and 18th century were not the sweet and beautifully shaped varieties we are accustomed to in our day. Pippins were lopsided, lumpy little fruits that were hard and tasted tart when picked early, but slowly ripened into a rich flavor. Other popular cyder apples were Pearmains, the oldest known apple of English origin, and Doctor Harvey apples, which originated in Norfolk, England in 1629.

Lumpy little pippins. Click here to learn more about the Newton Pippin apples in this photo. They are (link) now endangered in the U.S.

In the 16th and 17th centuries , apple orchards were planted in Kent, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire. Most of the apples, which were transported via canals throughout England to an ever expanding market, were used to make cider. This was how cider-making became a big business.

I recall reading one historian’s opinion that, because of the dangers of unsafe water, before the age of enlightenment and before tea, hot chocolate, and coffee became popular and more affordable, (the boiled water essential in their preparation was safe), the populace was generally soused morning, noon, and night from drinking alcoholic beverages such as wine, ale, gin, cider, and other fermented beverages. Some folks obviously drank more than others (the vivid characters in Tom Jones come to mind), but drinking alcoholic beverages was so common, that pregnant women were administered these drinks to dull the pain of labor.

The men and women who colonized the Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland) followed patterns similar to their British counterparts. Women made alcohol in the Colonies from the late 17th to late 18th centuries. Men owned the taverns, which made sense since women were not allowed to own property, except in the instance of a rich widow. And, so, cyder making , which was once a woman’s task, both in Great Britain and the colonies, was eventually overtaken by men as the distribution of cyder to male-owned taverns increased in both size, scope, and profitability.

Hard cider is once more gaining popularity in boutique craft breweries that are sprouting up in every place I frequent along the East Coast of the U.S.

In ending this post, I raise my glass of cyder to you, dear readers. May you and yours have a most blessed day with family and friends (and may you remember every bit of it!)

One of the privileges of using technology is our ability to peruse original editions online. We no longer need to travel to major city and university libraries to hunt down sources, or travel to distant states and lands, although viewing Jane Austen’s letters at the Morgan Library exhibit in New York gave me an unexpected thrill and feeling of awe.

Thomas Rowlandson is one of my favorite artists/caricaturists of the Georgian era. I hold him and the French caricaturist, Honoré-Victorin Daumier, in the highest esteem. As soon as I discovered this link I wanted to share it with you, the readers of this blog.

One reason I love Rowlandson cartoons is the attention he pays to details – the dog reacting to his street cries, the chair mending materials he carries, the old woman in the background holding a chair to mend – with deft lines he recreates a noisy, raucous street scene. This image from the British Library is in the public domain.

Jane, who traveled to Bath and London and other large towns, was no simpering Miss. She must have been exposed (infrequently, perhaps) to scenes such as the one depicted in “Strawberries.” If she did not view them as an eye witness, she might well have come upon to the many caricatures publicly hanging for sale in print shop windows or printed in publications.

Rowlandson incorporates rich story telling into his masterful drawings. The strawberry seller in the front of this detail has packaged her fruit tidily in small baskets, which the customer at right carries away with some satisfaction. The strawberry seller in the background at left sells her fruit loosely, allowing the male customer to bend over and ogle her bosom while grabbing for her berries, a not so subtle jab at the many streetwalkers (both day and night) occupying London at the time.

Jane’s pugnacious sense of humor, evident from her juvenilia and in a more sophisticated fashion in her later novels and letters, makes sense, given her talent, the way in which her family nurtured her budding talent, and the influence satiric novels and cartoons of the day must have had on her. No matter how gently bred a young lady might be (except for the most shielded), there was no escaping the dichotomy between the rules of etiquette for the gently bred and the general licentiousness of the Georgian era.

Rowlandson depicts both worlds masterfully in the hand-colored plates we are privileged to view in this online resource.

I love how Rowlandson draws details of every day life that no longer exists: the maid choosing a new door mat and another maid scrubbing the front stoop, while she is ogled by an old man. In ‘Earthen-Ware,’ a lady of quality inspects the pots and bowls for sale. This is a straightforward depiction of merchants trying to make a sale, one in which I can readily imagine Jane Austen as the customer. This public domain image was taken from this link on the British Library website.

One of the sweeter drawings in Rowlandson’s book. Public domain image from the British Library/

One can learn so much from these illustrations about early 19th century London and a life once lived and now lost. Heartbreaking scenes (such as those with the chimney sweepers and coal heavers) are interspersed with a sweet depiction of a young gardener showing his wares to a pretty woman or a funny scene of a woman crying “sweet lavender” while holding a screaming baby. These images help me understand Jane Austen’s London experiences better, while making me appreciate the sheer artistry of the man who created them.

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Hello, my name is Vic and I live in Richmond, VA. I work in program and professional development at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I have adored Jane Austen almost all of my life. I am a proud lifetime member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. I do not accept any form of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. However, I do accept and keep books, DVDs and CDs to review.

Contributors to this blog include: Tony Grant and Rachel Dodge.

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